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Computer Engineering (ETEEC-2018) | April 2018
e-ISSN: 2455-5703
Abstract
Solar energy is a promising alternative energy source for a sustainable pollution-free future. But certain factors such as solar
irradiation, lack of sunlight during night hours etc. degrade or diminish the scope of solar power. To address with this problem
MPPT technique is used here. Due to the requirements of high efficiency, reliability, power density and low cost and reduced size,
transformerless PV inverters can be utilized in a grid-connected solar energy system. But the presence of transformerless system
will lead to leakage currents, which is not at all acceptable in the case of grid connected applications. So to reduce leakage currents
the modified version of H6 inverters ie an H8 inverter is used in this paper. In order to synchronize H8 inverter and grid PI
controllers are used. This paper aims to utilize solar energy and reduce the leakage currents produced by transformerless inverter
for grid connected applications. This is done by the integration of solar, transformerless step-up converter and h8 inverter. The
concept is to utilize renewable sources effectively which helps in reducing the grid demand.
Keyword- Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT), Photovoltaic (PV)
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I. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays due to industrial development and population growth, global energy demand is increasing in an alarming rate. Owing
to the depletion of fossil fuels, distributed generation, and local use, the photovoltaic (PV) power generation system has become
the most promising renewable energy source. But certain factors such as solar irradiation, unavailability of sunlight during night
hours etc. diminishes the scope of utilizing sunlight as a renewable source. In order to deal with this problem, MPPT (Maximum
Power Point Tracking) technique is introduced, which is nothing but an algorithm to extract the maximum power from the solar
panels. The recent advancements in power electronics and solar technology offers convenient access to solar energy. Nowadays
government is also providing offers and tariffs, which promotes the grid connected PV power systems. With the help of grid
connected kind of PV system the energy crisis can be suppressed up to a certain level. Since the demand for electrical power is
rapidly increasing these days, any suitable method which can contribute to reduce this problem is acceptable. A power conditioning
unit (PCU) along with a low-frequency transformer on the AC side or a high-frequency transformer on the DC side is generally
required To integrate the PV source with the grid. By using transformers we can step up the input voltage. Also it provides galvanic
isolation and avoids DC current injection into the grid [5]. But these transformers are bulky, heavy, and expensive and reduce the
efficiency of the overall system. Also, using high-frequency transformer, the PV systems usually consist of several power stages,
which reduce the system efficiency and increase the system complexity and cost. To deal with this issues, transformerless PV
topologies are introduced which can reach their efficiencies up to 97%-98%. However, no isolation between PV sources and the
grid can cause numerous safety issues, corrosion in underground equipment, malfunction of sensors and distribution transformer
saturation under the effects of leakage current and DC current injection [6].
The generation of leakage currents is the major problem faced by a grid connected PV system. The leakage current arises
because of variations in AC common-mode voltage on stray capacitor between PV panels and ground; this stray capacitance can
have a typical value of 60–110 nF/kW for modules with crystalline silicon cells (monocrystalline, polycrystalline); and 100-160
nF for modules with thin-film cells [16]. The variations of the stray capacitor voltage causes the leakage current. The leakage
current should be strictly limited, since it can lead to safety issues, increased the total harmonic distortion (THD) of the injected
currents, and also electromagnetic interference (EMI) problems; all of which, may violate the grid standards. According to the
VDE 0126- 01-01 standard, the RMS value of the leakage current has to be limited below 300 mA [17, 18]. In case of the traditional
full-bridge (FB) inverter (also named as B6- type inverter), the leakage current is more than the regulated limit. There are two
approaches to eliminate or reduce the leakage current issue: one is to block the leakage current and the other is to reduce the
common-mode voltage variations. The first approach is achieved by employing additional switches, which can effectively separate
the PV side from the grid side whenever a zero-switching state is produced. The second approach is to keep the common-mode
voltage constant over the time or reduce its variations.
The Fig.3 below shows the output waveform from the solar panel. The amplitude of the voltage obtained is 24 V. The
output from the boost converter is shown in Fig. 5.It starts from origin and increases rapidly and settles about 60V. Even though
the duty ratio cannot be maintained at a constant value, it’s made between 0.5-0.6 for getting the expected waveform. Fig. 6 shows
the voltage waveform between two phases. This is the voltage which will be injecting to the grid. In order to synchronize the phase,
frequency and phase angle of grid voltage and inverter output, control scheme is included. The proposed new carrier based
modulation technique ensures good performance in terms of output current with low THD.
In addition, the leakage current is reduced significantly with proposed H8 topology.
V. CONCLUSION
This paper reviewed and investigated the performance of 3- phase transformerless PV inverters combined with PWM techniques
to reduce the leakage currents. The output waveform of H8 inverter is ripple free. When compared to previous inverter topology
like H6 inverter, the leakage current is reduced. The output waveform is the proof that leakage current is reduced considerably.
The control scheme is very much simple compared to existing systems.
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